Caroline Garcia(French) Biography

A 17-year-old French girl made her mark at the 2011 French Open even though she got no further than the second round.

She got into the second Grand Slam of her career on a Wild Card and was within a whisker of beating former Number One Maria Sharapova.

She impressed several people including British Number One Andy Murray who tweeted after watching her.

"The girl Sharapova is playing is going to be Number One in the world one day, Caroline Garcia. What a player - you heard it here first."

Born in St Germain-en-Laye, France on 16th October 1993 she now lives in Lyons and on May 16th 2011 she was ranked 188 in the world.

Her parents own a real estate agency but her father Louis Paul always travels with her. She started playing tennis at the age of 7-years-old along with a lot of sports but she chose to make tennis her career as she enjoyed it the most.

She was coached by Alain Reynaud and her father until March 2011 when Frederic Fontag took over her coaching.

At the age of 14 she competed in her first event, an ITF tournament at Les Contamines in France. Two years later she won a clay court tournament in Espinho, Portugal.

She was runner-up in Aschaffenburg, Germany at a clay court tournament where she lost in the Final to Madalina Gojnea, and in April 2011 she was runner-up again on a clay court tournament in Osprey, Florida losing to Claire de Gubernatis.

She got a wild card into her first Main Draw at a Grand Slam Tournament at the Australian Open in January 2011 and beat Varvara Lepchenko in the first round, but she failed to survive the second round when she lost to Ayumi Morito.

To meet Sharapova at the French Open she beat Zuzana Ondraskova 6-3/6-4 in the first round and she shot to a 6-3/4-1 lead and was 15-0 up when Sharapova upped her game and won 11 games in a row to take the second set and eventually the match.

Off court she enjoys reading and spending time with her family and she is continuing her schooling by correspondence.